CY 2017 Gawad Saka Award, for the most Outstanding Coconut Farmer is Mr. Gerardo C. Cordero, 60-year-old from Brgy. Topland, Koronadal City, South Cotabato, Region XII. Mr. Cordero is a retired government employee and graduate of BS Agriculture major in Agronomy. He gained considerable knowledge and skills in coconut farming with his almost 20 years of involvement in the coconut industry as farmer, leader and entrepreneur.

PRESS RELEASE

Quezon City, 06 May 2018 – The Philippine Coconut Authority (PCA) is calling on the National Biofuels Board (NBB) to raise to five percent the Coco Methyl Ester (CME) content of biodiesel currently sold in the domestic market. The present blend of biodiesel now in the country consists only of two percent CME and 98 percent regular diesel.

The fluctuation of domestic copra price is cyclical and this is beyond the control of the PCA or any government agency. This is so because the domestic copra price is dependent to the coconut oil price in the global market. The global coconut oil price on the other hand is determined or affected by the supply and demand situation of other vegetable oils (e.g. oil palm, soybean, rapeseed, sunflower, olive oil, etc.) Though the Philippines is the biggest exporter of coconut oil in the world, coconut oil is just one of the many vegetable oils produced in the world. As such, its price is greatly affected by the movement of prices of other vegetable oils particularly the palm oil which is the biggest among the internationally traded vegetable oils (35%), and soybean oil, the second biggest vegetable oil (29%).